Broadband Supercontinuum Spectrum Generated Highly Nonlinear Photonic Crystal Fiber Applicable to Medical and Optical Communication Systems

Optical-fiber-based supercontinuum (SC) light sources have attracted much research attention in recent years. High-quality nonlinear optical fibers allow us to readily implement stable and practical SC sources. In this work, we present a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HN-PCF) in optical coherence tomography (OCT) and telecommunication windows that can generate SC spectra. The finite difference method with an anisotropic perfectly matched layer boundary condition is used to calculate different properties of the proposed HN-PCF. From numerical simulation results, it is found that the HN-PCF nonlinear coefficients are more than 108.0, 74.0, and 53.0 (W·km)-1 at 1.06, 1.31, and 1.55 µm, respectively. The flattened chromatic dispersion is 0 to -4.0 ps/(nm·km) in the wavelength range of 1.06 to 1.7 µm (640 nm bandwidth), and the confinement loss is lower than 10-2 dB/km in the entire wavelength range. The generated supercontinuum bandwidths are 295.0, 408.0, and 590.0 nm at 1.06, 1.31, and 1.55 µm, respectively. The calculated longitudinal resolutions for biomedical imaging are 1.2, 1.2, and 1.1 µm at 1.06, 1.31, and 1.55 µm, respectively.

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